


As Love Would Have Us

by onnari



Series: In Life and Death, We Meet Again [1]
Category: Portrait de la jeune fille en feu | Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019)
Genre: F/F, Future Fic, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-06
Updated: 2020-05-06
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:01:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24045580
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onnari/pseuds/onnari
Summary: Marianne is still consumed by just the sight of her, needing to catalog Héloïse’s every feature, to commit it all over again to memory—to a canvas she can hold up to others and say, look, here is the essence of art and beauty.What she means is this is love, still—after everything—and she would capture the feeling with just her brushstrokes, tender and wrenching, at the first invitation.
Relationships: Héloïse/Marianne (Portrait of a Lady on Fire)
Series: In Life and Death, We Meet Again [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1744069
Comments: 22
Kudos: 82





	As Love Would Have Us

**Author's Note:**

> For S, dearest friend.

Marianne doesn’t recognize the name on the letter that comes to her. All she knows is that it is of fine material, that the hand is refined and the proposition it outlines more than generous.

A week’s worth of her private tutelage, accomodations provided for. The student, a young woman, eager to learn and with an enclosed sample of her work.

Occasionally work like this is offered to her, but rarely does she accept, the students being of middling ability or Marianne kept busy by the running of her father’s school, long made into her own. But the proposed week is during the summer holidays when she closes her doors, the students all gone home to family and Marianne has none—no family to keep her.

Cleaning her brushes after another disappointing painting session, she considers. She likes the location—near the sea. A chance to escape the insufferable heat and to maybe recapture some lost inspiration, the water always so good to her in that way.

She writes back the next week, giving her acceptance and naming her expectations. When she hears back she shutters her windows and promptly sets out, the road easy on her way to the estate.

There is an artistry on display just from the landscaping, nature carefully cultivated and arranged, but it is nothing compared to the interior. And in the sitting room, waiting for the lady of the house, the first thing that greets her is her own work. Landscapes, interpretations of history and myths—and a portrait.

Her hands shake in her lap as she stares up at it, all her thoughts come to ash. She can almost taste it on her tongue.

The sound of footsteps has Marianne out of her chair in an instant, and there Héloïse is. The dearest face of her life, drawn from memory countless times, but even her imagination could not have envisioned the exact set of her rounder face, wrinkled and vaguely spotted with age.

Mostly, though, it is like nothing has changed. Marianne is still consumed by just the sight of her, needing to catalog Héloïse’s every feature, to commit it all over again to memory—to a canvas she can hold up to others and say, look, here is the essence of art and beauty.

What she means is this is love, still—after everything—and she would capture the feeling with just her brushstrokes, tender and wrenching, at the first invitation.

But she is uncertain. Unsure if she can walk right to her.

“I’m a great patron of your work,” Héloïse says. “Maybe that’s why my daughter took an interest in art.”

Marianne sinks back down into her seat in spite of herself. “How could I not know?”

Héloïse smiles, her first, but it is a little sad. “Don’t fault yourself. I had others to purchase them on my behalf.”

Marianne grasps for a response, but she is too overcome, looking round at the paintings again. Without meaning to, her eyes fall back to the portraiture, painted with love so many years ago now.

“I meant what I said in the letter,” Héloïse says. “I’d like you to instruct her—I wouldn’t have her sit for a portrait of her own. No, I’ve told her she must make one herself, if she wishes it.” Héloïse smiles again, this time a little truer. “I’d let her choose, you see. What do we wish for, as parents, but to offer what we were denied in our youth?”

Marianne’s gaze drops to her hands, clenched in spite of herself. “I wouldn’t know,” she says. “I’ve never had a child of my own.”

“It is not everything,” Héloïse confesses. “Only so much can come from being an attentive mother. There are other wants, needs. And your child will always have their own life, too, increasingly separate from yours.”

“Your husband though,” Marianne forces herself to say. “I hope—I hope he adds to the good of your life.”

“We had our own kind of companionship,” Héloïse responds, her look straying in reminiscence. “But it has been years now since he’s passed.”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Marianne says, quiet, but Héloïse shakes her head.

“Leave those platitudes for others. Even now, I mourn you more.” She bites at her lip, looking younger then, clear yearning in her gaze. “Maybe for the never having of you, not as I should have been able.”

Marianne trembles with emotion she can hardly bear even as she stands, crossing the distance they’ve so foolishly left between them in this room. She falls more than anything into Héloïse arms and Héloïse catches her soundly, their arms locked tight around each other as their faces draw together, as naturally as anything.

Their first kiss is all anticipation, all recklessness, firm and desperate. Marianne’s hands wind tight in Héloïse’s hair, angling her face in just the right way, and Héloïse’s fingertips press at the base of Marianne’s scalp, finding just the right spot and pressure to make her gasp. Héloïse seizes the opportunity immediately, deepening their kiss, one seemingly endless exchange of love and reassurance and things still left unsaid but only for lack of an earlier chance to say the words.

Somewhere, distantly, a clock chimes the hour. “My daughter,” Héloïse says. “She’ll be home soon.” Her lips, tempting as ever, press together, and she turns her cheek so Marianne’s next kiss only lands on her cheek. “I can only hope you will take to each other. Seeing the way she loves to paint, that crinkle of concentration when she does, sometimes I could almost believe she was ours. That we have not lost any time at all.”

Marianne can’t breathe, staring at her in shock. But subtlety and reticence was never their way with all the sense of hurry and emotion between them. And there is gladness in the knowing. Knowing Héloïse still wants her in just the way Marianne has always wanted her back, unchanging in spite of the years.

“You will stay as you said you would, won’t you?” Héloïse asks, a hint of doubt surfacing across her face. “To meet and teach her?”

“Yes,” Marianne vows, already thinking of the future and its possibilities. “And if I can, I will fill the rest of my day with you.”

“Have your fill.” Héloïse’s mouth curves, sealing her own promise with a kiss. “And any time I have."

Marianne laughs until Héloïse laughs back, and she thinks they have time now, as long as their lives will be, to go slowly. But maybe it will never be in their nature nor their love, and she is delighted and reconciled to that fact all at once. "And you have mine."

**Author's Note:**

> The first of two imagined reunions, this one written to complement the part that will follow next week.


End file.
